Page 1 of Vengeance and Vipers
ChapterOne
MADDOX
‘Krase?’ I ask harshly into the dark, wondering how he can possibly still be here.Alive.
There’s a low laugh as he comes to the fore of the second cell, his dark red hair long and matted, his face half hidden by an unkept auburn beard.
‘I don’t understand,’ I mutter. ‘Why aren’t you dead? How did you get out of the fold I put you in?’
The sad fact is that I left him with a loaded pistol at his own request inside a fae-built cell in his room upstairs. He’d promised me that he’d use it when things got bad rather than trying to escape. I thought he would.
I hoped he would.
After all, he knew what was happening to him, how hopeless it all was ...is.
He laughs again, but when he looks at me, his eyes are tortured. I know what I should do and what my duty is as the leader of this clan. He didn’t do what he said he would, so now it’s down to me. I need to put him down. He’s a rogue—a danger. Even I won’t be able to control him.
He rattles the door of the cell suddenly, making me step back in case he can get out of there, but the magickly reinforced iron holds.
‘You locked yourself in.’
‘Aye.’ His expression turns lucid. ‘Where have you been?’
‘You’d never believe me.’
But he’s already forgotten I’m there. I can see that as he turns his back on me and goes to the other side of his cell, staring at Jules, still asleep and wrapped up in the blanket.
‘You brought an entree,’ he murmurs, and I second-guess putting Jules down here even though they’re separated.
I should stow her in the tiny, padded fold I had created for Krase to be safe in. But it’s fae-made. There’s no guarantee that it’s secure now that we’re hiding from the law. For all I know, it could alert the authorities to our whereabouts if I start playing around with it. No, she needs to stay here. For now, at least. The cell is holding, and if Krase locked himself inside, it was because he knew that he couldn’t get out.
Krase sniffs the air and looks confused because he can’t smell the figure in the other cell. That’s definitely for the best, I muse. He’ll be angry if he’s not too far gone to understand who’s in there.
I watch my clan-mate lumber around the cell, kicking at the debris, mumbling to himself. I could delegate his execution to one of the others, but I was always taught that a leader doesn’t ask anything of his people that he isn’t willing to do himself. That, and the others said their goodbyes weeks ago. They’re all well into the grieving process. Knowing he’s still alive now will do more harm than good. I have to be the one.
But not tonight.
I turn away while his attention isn’t on me, listening to him rant quietly to himself as I leave the dungeon, turning the key in the lock of the outer door and walking briskly through my wine cellars. On the way out, I grab a‘62 Chateau Latourand trudge up the stone stairs.
After swinging by the kitchen to uncork the bottle and grab a glass because I’m not a heathen, I head straight for my own room. I shut myself inside, sitting calmly on the bed and pouring myself a large dose. I knock it back quickly, hardly tasting the expensive vintage. This bottle is for getting drunk, not for savoring.
I stare at the floor, my happiness at being home being tempered by the mass of problems I have downstairs as well as in the rooms adjacent to mine.
When Axel and Jayce are up, they’re going to be more than furious, and it’s going to take time for them to understand that what I did was for the best. I errantly wonder if I should bring in a supe MD. It’s clear that Julia Brand didsomethingto them in the Mountain. I could call Alex and get him to send Theo, his resident doctor, but discount it almost immediately. Better no one knows we’re here until I’ve started the process of getting us pardoned, not even ‘allies’.
I just have to hope that whatever hold Jules has on half my clan will dissipate in time. Although, with herhere, that could well not be the case. Putting down the glass on my nightstand, I rub my face, running my hands through my hair.
We’ll need food. The on-call girls we had before are gone now. I let them out of their contracts when shit started to hit the fan last month, assuming we’d be able to do what we normally do when we’rebetweenhumans, just go to the clubs to feed from supes. Now, if we want to do any of that, it’ll have to be in disguise, which means conjures, which means fae trinkets. I wish I knew more about them, but Krase was our resident expert on magickal fae objects, and I don’t know what’s safe. I don’t want to lead the fae right to our door because I used a charm to conjure up a crooked nose.
Tomorrow, I need to start calling in favors and contacting the right people to make sure we don’t get sent back to the Mountain once it inevitably comes out that we’ve returned. Then there’s finding help for the daily running of the estate, which is also a must.
I drink the rest of the bottle in record time and flop into my bed, the reality of being back making our stay in the Mountain seem like a holiday.
Given the lengthy list of what I need to do tomorrow, I hope that my unhappy clan doesn’t thwart me at every turn.
One thing’s for certain. All of them will be a hundred times more unmanageable if they find out I have a pair of secret prisoners downstairs.
But that’s a tomorrow problem.
